May 12: Not long after midday, a Woodinville officer responded to an accident scene involving a bus and three other vehicles. The bus — with 38 passengers aboard — had lost its brake control while on an incline most steep. As it descended, the driver was unable to downshift or otherwise slow its inevitable progress.

It made its way over a stop sign and proceeded into a roundabout, where it collided with the first vehicle (the driver and passenger in this vehicle were transported to a medical facility for minor injuries).

Undaunted, the bus proceeded to strike two other vehicles near the roundabout (no new injuries resulted).

Both these vehicles sustained only minor damage to their rear bumpers.

Its penchant for mayhem not yet sated, the bus stopped only when its path was obstructed by large stones outside a landscaping business.

None of the passengers on the bus were severely harmed, but a number of signs, plants and other items along the behemoth’s trajectory were damaged.

The driver won’t be cited, as the situation was certainly beyond his control.

The bus mechanic, however, might need a talking to!

Out ta Get Me

May 15: An officer and his K9 companion arrived at a Woodinville restaurant where there were complaints of a woman using its bathroom as a drug ingestion site.

When the woman left the bathroom, she went to the restaurant’s bar to tell the barkeep that she was armed.

From there, the woman fled in the direction of a venerated federal facility.

The officer began his search in the environs of that facility and soon observed a woman walking through a gas station parking lot. The woman denied she had been at the restaurant. A review of the woman’s identifying information led to knowledge of her two active warrants and subsequent arrest.

A reading of the Miranda warning prompted the woman to proclaim, "That does not apply to me." Her belongings included a device for smoking unsavory stimulants, but no actual stimulants.

As the officer transported her to jail, the woman rambled about her employment with a federal agency and provided garbled numeric information.

She also made several statements with overtones of a conspiracy theory before concluding that someone had stolen her identity.

Certainly confinement will give her time to contemplate this state of affairs.

It’s So Easy

May 16: The circumstances of this case began a few months prior when the suspect in question had stolen a few items from a Woodinville retailer. According to the store’s loss-prevention officer, the suspect had liberated a Leatherman from its packaging and placed it inside a piece of luggage before taking it to the front of the store, where he left it near the pickup area.

He soon returned and walked out of the store with the goods. After a few months’ absence, the suspect returned to the store where the LPO observed him conceal several watches, hats and items of women’s clothing in a duffel bag that he then hid within the store. As the suspect executed his scheme, the LPO made his presence known, which evidently caused the suspect to depart without any of the items he’d hidden. The same suspect was positively identified by a bulletin created by a Woodinville grocery store, where he had been apprehend earlier in May.

Charges for the man have been forwarded to the prosecutor for consideration.